Last Month

Busy busy. Let's get to it.

Misadventures in Other Users

One January morning, I asked in the catbox (as I sometimes do) whether I could do anything for the folks logged in. doyle responded "Please Mr. Brawl I want to be King and have a "!" next to my name--where do I apply?" About a year prior to this TheBooBooKitty has asked for an "M". On a whim, I gave TBBK one, and left this 'vanity hack' for about a week without it attracting much notice. So this time I repurposed the same code and gave doyle his ! which seemed to make him happy.

Fine and dandy, but this time (perhaps because of the relative visibility of doyle, or perhaps because of his sudden propensity to say "!" in the catbox) things were different. The rogue ! bothered a number of admins and users, who felt it showed favouritism. Perhaps it did, a little - mayhap I was quicker to give it to doyle, an ex-admin, that I might have been had someone unknown to me asked for one. In any case there were complaints, and I rescinded it. As 'Editor in Chief' it is inappropriate for me to use my powers for such things, even when they're meant only in levity. Apologies extended, lesson learned.

It got me thinking though. We have %, $, and @. If we did have an ! as well, what would it be? I thought of merit and the Honor Roll. Some time back I tweaked Everything's Best Users to have a merit ranking. What if the top 20 (say) users by merit were marked by a !? (doyle would get his ! back, for one thing.) However, at the time that I did the EBU change Professor Pi said "I've never cared much for "Best User" lists. Actually, I think it is not a good idea. They become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The ones on that list get more traffic, and therefore more (up)votes ... The fair way to rank them is by (merit)*(#writeups). I believe we called that devotion." The Prof also suggested "...a list with "new" users (25-50 wus?) ranked by merit. That way we can spot the talents." How do people feel about this?

Of course, this requires coding. I could code it myself directly into Other Users, but the lag/drag of calculating this on every page load could be too much. If a super coder could set it up to run once a day, so we can use a stashed list to identify the ! users, we might try it out. Just an idea for now. In the meantime all due respect to 'King' doyle, and apologies to those who were bothered by my bit of foolishness.

Content issues

To link, or not to link, that is the Question of the Month. At least for Auduster, who has posted the epic work Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall without a single hard link. The question before the court of public opinion: Are hard links truly a requirement of an E2 writeup? Does this have meaning for "today's E2"?

Typically when novice users post their first writeup, it gets shot down for any of three reasons: No formatting, no hard links, or plain old lousy content. TMQw/JC@CH was lovingly crafted both in format and content. No issues there. It just hadn't been hard linked, by the deliberate choice of the author.

What does that mean? How much of E2 is the "neural net" formed by the interaction of hard and soft links? By withholding hard links, was the author spurning 'the rest' of E2's content? Or is the hard link a convention of an earlier E2, no longer needed?

We've certainly evolved from the old days where hard links were often used for emphasis in a sentence, or found on practically every word. A smaller number of links placed judiciously where a reader might wish to drill is now preferred. But no links?

People would be less likely to copy text into the search window than to click a hard link. soft links would form more slowly, and thus key links might not be created. The soft links form a great resource, and surprising connections appear that the writeup author did not consider or even know about. Much of the joy of E2 comes from finding a startling soft link that leads to a subnet of amazing content.

In another way, hard links may be even more useful in modern browsers. I find that tabbed browsing makes the hard link work - I click one and read on in the writeup, then I later flip between tabs to see the drill downs. But admittedly the hard links I'm given may not be for terms I want to follow, or may pipe link elsewhere.

Basically, the question became: are hard links a defining E2 feature? E2 FAQ: Integrate your writeups says yes, and the consensus among the admin team was to agree. After much debate, the policy as defined in that FAQ entry stands. No "rebuttal" to kthejoker need now appear - but I thank Auduster for stimulating a useful debate.

Incidentally, my old writing partner dannye and some others have suggested a more 'Wiki like' link display format without the underline, to make writeups more readable. Some folks find our link format jarring. Yet hard links that were just a different colour would present Section 508 issues. It'd have to be user configurable if we ever do it. But that's for dann and the code crew to consider, not me!. I have enough worries. And chief among them:

Bringing the hate

At the same time as the link debate was going on, HateQuest 2006 appeared. I had challenged my new thorn amnesiac to create a Quest. It's the sort of thing I'd like to talk to Dr. Frankenstein about over a beverage. Little did I know that I'd created a monstah!

There has been, ironically, a lot of bad feeling about the very idea. Some good folks have been offended, for which I am truly sorry. But some great writeups (and, admittedly, some dross) have resulted. I thought the idea had some merit, even though I disagreed with some of its central tenets, and so I 'published' the writeup. (The admin equivalent of a "don't delete" sign.) This by no means makes it an admin-sponsored quest. Its very nature precludes that, though we can and will certainly reward outstanding entries just as we would any great content.

Just so we're CRYSTAL clear, though: Personal attacks on, or flagrant abuse of, fellow noders WILL NOT be tolerated. Personal attacks and derogatory behaviour toward other users is an account suspension offense. demeaning other members of the community has never been acceptable here.

Similarly hard-core hate speech will not be permitted. Recently Britain's Racial and Religious Hatred Bill was in the news. According to the articles I read, it was originally fairly sweeping, but currently limits the "offence of inciting (religious) hatred to intentionally threatening words and behaviour". A good guideline for us, too. Threatening writeups will be removed and threatening users will have their accounts locked down.

This also leads me to consider the current global political crisis over depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. Sooner or later some bright bulb is going to decide to "stand up" for something and post one of these on their home node. Again, let me be CRYSTAL clear. If you do this, or post anything else which is clearly provocative and creates a danger to the site, I will delete the image and suspend your image posting privileges. Regardless of who is right or wrong, it is apparent that the images incite hatred and cause violence. We don't need that here, and furthermore we owe it to the nice folks who provide our bandwidth not to place their facilities at risk of attack because we allowed it.

Yet (to return to HQ) amnesiac brought us a Quest. There's been a lot of gnashing of teeth over it, but amnesiac didn't do anything that any other user could not do. He created a writeup and proposed a Quest. I'd like nothing better than to see some other Quests, ones that we could all embrace, and that would give us something else (maybe even less contentious!) to talk about.

Admin staff changes

e2gods

As some have noticed, JohnnyGoodyear has taken a sabbatical from E2, and has left the admin team. I will leave it to the principals to comment on the reasons for this. JG was a positive and creative force within the admin team and we'll miss his contributions. We'll also have to find another sucker to foist our novice poets on....

Content Editors

As promised, we have some new CEs this month. I was thrilled with the many solid applications, and regret that I don't have room for everyone on this intake. Note that some folks sent me direct applications. There were some excellent ones, but as I said this process would be public, I have selected only those who posted to the site in accordance with my original intent.

I think we have a good mix of talents, skills, and ideas in the new Content Editors. Please welcome izubachi, grundoon, allseeingeye, DejaMorgana, XWiz, and Excalibre to the admin team. We also welcome back Wuukiee for a second term as a CE.

Update Feb 15: NinjaPenguin has stepped down from the CE group. And so the Great Circle of Life continues. Thanks, NinjaPenguin, for all of your work on the site!

Next Month